He learned the date of his rape trial — and then the teen who accused him went missing, cops say

On Jan. 23, he learned the date of his trial on rape charges, records show.

The next day, the girl who had accused 42-year-old Quinn James of raping her three times — 16-year-old Mujey Dumbuya — went missing, WWMT reports. And just days after her disappearance, a couple on a walk in Kalamazoo, Mich., stumbled upon her dead body in a wooded area about 50 miles from the girl’s home in Grand Rapids.

Dumbuya’s right shoe — a pink Nike tennis shoe — was missing when her body was found, according to investigators. She was wearing jeans and a white and pink T-shirt with Cinderella’s face on the front.

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“Mujey was a generous, energetic young woman with a radiant smile and an adventurous spirit,” her family said in a statement to WOOD. “Mujey was looking forward to graduating from high school next year. She wanted to be a police officer to help fight against social injustice, including racism.”

Months before she went missing, Dumbuya had reported James to police after she said he raped her in a parking lot not far from a school, BuzzFeed reports. He then made her have sex with him a handful of other times, she said. Dumbuya was 15 at the time.

James had been charged with four counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor following the accusations, according to BuzzFeed. He’d been charged as a habitual offender because the charge was James’ fourth offense, prosecutors said. After his November arrest, James told police that he had consensual sex with a teen girl, Buzzfeed reports.

James faces unrelated rape charges related to an incident in 2014, WKZO reports. He’s being held on $500,000 bond.

James was fired from his job as a maintenance worker at a local school in the fall of 2017 after he was accused of sexually assaulting a student from the school over the summer, WOOD reports.

The district’s superintendent told the TV station that the alleged assault didn’t occur at school and that James and the alleged victim didn’t meet at school, either.

Dumbuya and other relatives arrived in Michigan from Sierra Leone as refugees in 2005, MLive reports.